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2 Literature Review
The review is pided into two parts: previous studies on subtitle translation and previous studies on functionalist translation theory.
2.1 Previous Studies on Subtitle Translation
The history of subtitle translation in China could be traced back to 1949, but it is“1980s, the era after the reform and open-up, that witnessed a dramatic rise in the subtitle translation for movies and TV shows. Studies on translation in this field, however, are far and few between compared to the number of subtitles” (Li & Bao, 2005, p. 45). Qian Shaochang has been a pioneer in the research of subtitle translation. He has concluded that “the number of audience/ readers of subtitle exceeds that of translated literature works. The social influence of subtitle also surpass that of translated literature works”(Qian, 2000, p. 61).
Subtitles can be categorized as two types: intra-lingual subtitling and inter-lingual subtitling (Yang, 2006). What this thesis ties to analyze is inter-lingual subtitling, which is also known as diagonal subtitling translation.
As is noticed and pointed out by many scholars, subtitles have two main features: they only appear on the screen for a short period of time and they are constrained by limited space, mainly the bottom part of the screen, about “1/12 of the width of the screen” (Zhao, 2008, p. 104). Because of these two features, scholars have shed lights on subtitle translation. They are as follows:
Li Yunxing proposes in Strategies for Subtitle Translation that the subtitle should be able to offer the most relevant information within limited time and space because subtitles are displayed on the screen only for a short period of time and the audience couldn’t flick the images back and forth until he or she understands the meaning, otherwise, the coherence of the watching experience is going to be disturbed. So he proposes that the translator could actually choose to deduce some information when necessary. The concept of deduction can be further categorized into condensation, reductive paraphrasing and deletion (Li, 2001). Li’s point could be summarized as processing source text to make subtitle short and easy to understand.